Cosmological simulations, galaxy mocks and cosmology from surveys

Abstract

This project is aimed at an outstanding undergraduate student in Physics, Astronomy or the elite Molecular Sciences program at USP. In the first 6 months we will concentrate on the basic formation in General Relativity, Cosmology and notions about Cosmology, using standard textbooks [e.g., S. Carroll; B. Ryden; S. Dodelson; Mo, van den Bosch & White]. In the second part of the project (6 months) we will introduce the student to N-body simulations (dark matter only), with simple exercises such as computing the mass function from a halo catalog, as well as the statistics of some basic properties of the halos. Then, we will have the student compute the correlation function and the power spectrum of the halos, using tools available in our group. The next step is to introduce the notion of real v. redshift space, both in the linear and non-linear regimes. The student will then compute the 2D correlation function in redshift space. The next step is to introduce the notion of an HOD (Halo Occupation Distribution, A. Berlind et al., ApJ 2003), and produce galaxy mocks from the halo catalogs. Then, the student will compute again the correlation functions and power spectra of the galaxies in the mocks. Finally, the student will compute covariance matrices from the mocks, and use it in a Markov-Chain Monte Carlo to extract constraints on bias and other cosmological parameters.